Part 4: Onward to Cameroon

By Henry Homeyer
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Gretchen and I made it to Agadez, a desert market town in Niger, 850 miles due south of Tamanrassett, and I immediately felt at home.

Just out of college, I had taught fourth grade in Jersey City, N.J., at a inner-city public elementary school and, like children around the world,  the children in Agadez reminded me of those in Jersey City.

A lot was strange, though, including that the well water was not free. Water was a scarce commodity here, and luckily it only cost pennies for what we needed.

We arrived in the early afternoon and, first on our agenda, was finding a place to stay. Asking around, I was told there was only one place for “toubobs” (strangers), and I was directed to it. Made of adobe, it didn’t seem very fancy, but a room cost around $100 a night, which was our entire budget for many days. Of course, we didn’t stay there.

Standing outside the hotel and under the hot sun, we considered our next steps. We were tired and Gretchen was suffering another bout of amoebic dysentery, which came and went for both of us over a few months. Unlike her usual self, she burst into tears. As I tried to comfort her, an older local woman approached and asked in broken French, “What’s the matter, honey?”

We explained that we had come down from Tamanrasset and were traveling on a shoestring … we had gone to the one hotel for us but could not afford it … and Gretchen was sick. “Don’t worry,” the woman said. “My husband is Italian and loves to meet other white people. You can stay with us.” It was a much-appreciated bolt of good luck after days of bouncing in an overcrowded Land Rover.

She and Mario lived very simply in a small adobe building with no electricity, no running water. Just one bedroom. We were given a small, walled-in area to sleep. It had neither a bed nor a ceiling. It was a tiny courtyard really, open to the stars. And, fortuitously for Gretchen, it was connected to a small room with a pit latrine. And when our new friend learned of Gretchen’s illness, she moved her daughter’s army cot into our space so Gretchen would be more comfortable. I, however slept on the sand floor.

We stayed a few days, until Gretchen’s symptoms eased. Dysentery is a cyclical disease that makes you very sick, then goes away and returns until you receive treatment. If not, it eventually will kill you. We had never heard of amoebic dysentery and didn’t know what made both of us so ill.

Walking around town, I did run into a fundamentalist American missionary who I assumed might have access to medicine. But before helping me, he wanted us to join his religion and have our souls saved. Stupidly, perhaps, I declined his offer. If there was a pharmacy or a health clinic, he kept it to himself, and my searches for medical aid were for naught.

Mario owned a two-wheelbarrow construction company with one employee. They built adobe houses — and he was not getting rich. Apparently, he came to Agadez right after World War II and had never returned.

I asked Mario what he missed most about Italy. I was expecting him to talk about his family back home or the food. He paused, then described a special Toscano cigar made with strong, black tobacco. It is long and tapered at both ends, and you cut the cigar in half before smoking it. As luck would have it, I had a few packed away in a little tin box that my pipe tobacco came in. At the time, I was a pipe smoker and did enjoy the occasional cigar. But these were just too strong, and my memory keeps going to the word ”nasty.’ So, I gave them all to Mario, who was overcome with joy.

Meanwhile, Gretchen remained ill, unable to eat solid food. She could however tolerate drinking Coca-Colas, which were cheap and readily available. And it provided much-needed calories. I basically kept her alive for three days on Cokes, as she laid on her cot, hot and sweaty and enduring the constant buzz of flies.

I spent my time walking around Agadez, an old city with an estimated population of 30,000 in 1591, and a 2026 population of about 130,000. Then? Maybe 50,000, but the city seemingly went on forever.

The principal attraction in Agadez is the mosque, built in 1515 and rebuilt in 1844. It is the tallest adobe building in the world, with a minaret that looms nine stories above the city. Agadez has a long tradition of making fine crafts. Its craftspeople include silversmiths, leather workers and cloth weavers, and I spent considerable time watching them at work.

Our time with Mario and his wife would be cut short after we caught Mario beating his wife, accusing her of infidelity, while another tenant of our little courtyard, an Italian man who enjoyed prancing about in blue silk bikini briefs, pulled Mario away from his wife as he shouted, “Basta, Mario, basta!”  Mario disappeared soon after.

Gretchen and I reasoned that the reason Mario had moved to Agadez after World War II and never returned to Italy was simple: He probably was a war criminal.

Our comfort level, however, had lessened, as had Gretchen’s illness, so we thanked our hostess and left.  I had learned about a campground outside of town, and Gretchen and I moved to it while trying to find a ride south.

There was no apparent public transportation from Agadez going south. Passengers could ride on top of the loads on the big trucks that carried goods, but if one of us became ill up there, that would be problematic. The campground turned out to be where travelers in private vehicles stayed, and we eventually found a ride to Niamey, Niger, and from there rides to Nigeria and eventually to our destination in Cameroon  and my sister Ruth Anne’s home.

During the previous summer in Paris, Gretchen and I had met up with Ruth Anne and her husband and made plans.  I foolishly said we would be in Bamenda, Cameroon, by Thanksgiving, and if we were not there by Christmas, they should assume we were dead.

It was mid-December when we left Agadez and we were more than 1,000 miles from Bamenda. There were no phones. I had written to them from Tamanrasset, but had no idea when our postcard would arrive since the mails were slow. We just knew we had to hustle.

And we did, arriving in Bamenda on Christmas Eve, long before that postcard would.

We were never to make it around the world. Gretchen and I joined the Peace Corps and stayed in Bamenda about four years. Then I worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Bangui, Central Africa, and in Mauritania, both with short contracts.

After that? I served as Peace Corps country director in Bamako, Mali, for more than four years. And after almost exactly 10 years away, I returned to my home in Cornish Flat, N.H. That was in 1982. And to this day, I am still here.

Editor’s Note: Gretchen and Henry divorced in 1984 and she continued to work for U.N. agencies around the world until her death in 1995.

Part 1: The 10-year desert journey begins

Part 2: Our first days on the Sahara Desert

Part 3: 600 miles of sand, heat, intrigue and illness

Part 4: Onward to Cameroon

This four-part series from gardening writer Henry Homeyer’s memoir-in-progress tells about traveling across the Sahara in 1972, using public transportation — cargo vehicles — and by hitchhiking.  Homeyer, of New Hampshire, ended up living in Africa for 10 years, three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, two short contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development  and more than four years as the Peace Corps country director in Mali.